I'm told that the world kept existing.

people watched movies

played roles

laughed together and strengthened friendships

perhaps soon that too shall be me

but I definitely said "sure I'll write that holiday log don't worry I got this" so I might continue to be buried under words

I have missed you

You are very strong

I talk about it like it's over, but I do still have the aftershocks coming up

the "um excuse me why is my grade so low"s

there's one student athlete who was like "um so I need at least a B to stay on my team" who did not, in fact, earn a B

I could have fudged it for him! But he didn't meet the page requirement on any of the assignments and I don't give out grades that weren't earned

had to leave a lot of notes like this one too

lmao vicious

lots of teenagers seem to think that I don't know what size 13 font looks like

whatever happened to the days of 2.1 line spacing and bolding your punctuation

at least be subtle about it

teenagers are not subtle anymore

they fail at cheating so hard

there are so many ways to cheat

I want to take some of them aside and be like "THESE ARE THE HACKS FOR MY CLASS"

"this is how you can answer my discussion questions without reading the material. I leave you an out in the prompt"

one of my A students was chatting with me after class and going on about how much work he has for his other classes and then looked embarrassed and went " I mean. No offense, professor, but this class is really easy..." and I was just like "I KNOW, RIGHT."

AHDKJLAHEKJA

like man if youre gonna cheat. cheat subtly

do they even teach word/office anymore?

You are very strong and the teenagers may learn. Hopefully... Maybe...

do they even know not to use contractions to pad out word length?

kindaklutzy: they do not teach the Office package anymore. its actually really stressful when they get to college and all their professors expect that they know how to use the programs

they don't know what they're doing but don't want to admit they don't know what's happening and it can actually be a hurdle in how quickly they pick up the rest of college-level stuff

my Septembers are usually spent teaching people how to attach a file

They're like "but I sent you the gdocs link what do you mean"

oh jeeze

that sounds frustrating

I'm jealous....

g ... rades ... brb

(don't worry I submitted lol I also am expecting results though!)

... THANK YOU FOR THE REMINDER I like this result

welcome back! you are strong. but i can help with holiday log. I got surprise extra time. might be fun for all three of us to put it together, even

no matter how many times I try to explain that students are unprepared and afraid the College Standard Expectations will never adapt or address accordingly

instead students pull that nonsense on their papers and are surprise pikachu

now that I have read the screenshot: WOW

Aww man, half the fun of using Word is learning how to cheat with it

with the "everything is chromebooks now" ... THING that is happening in schools, i bet office will be EVEN LESS

schools offer free access to Office 365 though

also one of my favorites was to make just the punctuation a different font-

oh yeah that also works

but ALSO like if you're going to do that it's polite to at least hide your trail by submitting a pdf

don't just upload the .doc so I can open it and click through your bullshit

hm does the pdf hide the trail or expose the trail

it hides it because you can't see the font options on a pdf with anything but your eyes

you get plausible deniabiluty that way, like "oh wow it looked different on my home computer... are you sure?"

They're not even trying to gaslight me lmao

How disappointing lol

oh no i meant is it sus to receive a pdf when an honest doc would do

oh its not sus at all. it's pretty standard

college has changed so much

I prefer it to having to struggle through opening a .pages file

i sent in a pdf for a PhD paper and got told docx was required. I thought they'd prefer a pdf in case they wanted to read it on a tablet or something but hey surprise

meanwhile high schoolers know how to make pdfs, that is big

oh for doctoral level work I would always just send both. so they could comment on the doc but also have the pdf on hand in case any of the formatting went ridiculous

I made the pdf because the doc formatting seemed to be moving my headers weird, yeah. so I sent both once - I will just do that unless someone expresses another desire

but like in terms of wanting to be able to review attempts at fluffing out a paper to make it longer, like... if they're convincing they deserve to get away with it tbh. caring about the non-obvious stuff feels kind of high school level

a lot of the undergrad experience is spent figuring out how not to do the work

like if they're going into one of the sciences, the point is ultimately that they get the information to stick in their heads

I don't care if the nurse drawing my blood can write lengthy prose, but I care very much that she knows how to do the blood draw

alexipharmaca: you're at the diss stage, right? I would argue that content is more important than formatting at that stage. use whatever your advisor prefers to make comments on

(lol the diss.... mine is half a chapter collecting dust whispering that I should write more in it)

not quite, still proposal revisions which run along classes; I'm part time, but basically it's throwing the proposal around yes

oh congrats - the prospectus is when it starts to finally feel like it's a real thing that can actually exist

yeah, I'm still very "how did I just get offered a small grant for this being important in the current climate" who actually wants to hear me scream about this for 30000 pages. the answer is enough people I guess.

but I am not allowed to use mixed methods so my next semester is going to be Figuring Out the Study.

lol I'm in English so the grants are mostly about finding rich nerds who geek out to exactly the niches I'm writing about

English is very much "idk I made some shit up in my brain but it's pretty to read?"

which is basically the entire argument of sidney's defense of poesy so I guess that works

senior faculty keep telling me that my academic rigor is perhaps more intense than it should be and I'm always just like "how is the solution to do less sourcework, exactly"

my field can be done with 5 friends and a library card and I refuse to take it more seriously than that

I can help with the holiday log now that I'm back around and getting my shit semi-together!

We have entered the "bargaining" stage

this is why my ratemyprofessor pages get reviewbombed because I'm like this

Go you.

loooool someone just uploaded a paper

NOPE

not even gonna acknowledge that one

I told him on the 18th to upload whatever he had because something was better than nothing

the 18th was a while ago

yeesh. the lowest bar

Wow. Not even I am that bad of a procrastinator.

holy shit I asked for a 24hr extension as an adult in a doctoral program and was still expecting a totally reasonable no, imagine just turning in something after grades are due

Oh what I think has happened is that some of their professors have let it slip that our grades aren't due until close to new year's, and some of them are under the impression that they can bargain until our deadline

meanwhile flashbacks to the first class where "I have cancer and there are a lot of demands on my time" was part of the opening speech

being a high school teacher is a full time position with pension and benefits. they're expected to handle bullshit in the off hours because they're salary

teachers have to put up with 10pm angry letters from parents and shit

I don't have that kind of work stability and they don't get to encroach upon my life in the same way

I already got my last paycheck for this term. I'm not getting paid again until January

solidarity to that, I'm kinda there now with "I am on chemotherapy currently and might have weird response times" which is why I'm trying to TA online only ... there are two of us in my cohort of seven on chemo right now

I do not currently have cancer, I had big removal surgery a year ago, but am on low dose chemo for autoimmune disease still.

I'm glad you are out of that situation though!

yeah stand up for yourself!! they're adults now they need to enjoy adult freedoms and consequences

oh I was never in that situation - there's a reason I don't teach high school

that and all the teachers I've met have been kind of insufferable and more interested in having summers off than the material they're supposed to be dedicating their lives to

which like. Fair, but I don't trust you with Shakespeare

RE your health situation: if it makes you feel better, I taught all the way through chemo and then I got out of chemo and went straight into the pandemic. so you're not alone. I've never had the luxury of doing TA stuff and am not even sure what's involved in that. In theory it sounds like kind of a vacation

what if there was a split in workload and I didn't have to give a lecture AND write the assignments AND read everything

I only have to give a lecture and read everything lol

though my understanding is that in practice TAs do all the work I'm doing now except you get like .005% of the credit

Someone else writes the assignments and tests! I don't have to do that!

Yay upcoming break?

IT WOULD BE NICE semester breaks are when I do my actual academic work

there are a bunch of grant opportunities that have proposal deadlines in early January and I'd like to apply for some so I can continue to feed myself

Academia is that weird profession where everyone thinks it's about teaching but everyone inside of it is running around looking for ways to not have to teach

like that was the whole advice I got from my dissertation advisor "How can I get this process moving faster?" "Stop teaching 4 classes in a semester like a crazy person"

yeah I'm doing a proposal right now for $6500 in doctoral study money that is due Jan 1

and I found out about it friday morning

I closed all the assignments so no one could upload a new paper when they saw their grades. I expect the angry emails to start tomorrow...

You gotta love it when ppl who often have tenure tell you to teach fewer classes & you want to be like, “you never had to worry about feeding yourself or your cat, did you?”

I teach the number of classes necessary to meet my financial needs of the semester. Until August, when it’ll drop to just 3...but I have to get through 5 in the spring, first.